In such an apparatus as a multifunction device provided with a facsimile function, an overall control section for overall control of the operations of the entire system is configured independently of a communications control section for controlling the facsimile communications. The functions and loads are controlled separately between them through exchange of required information between these control sections, thereby meeting the requirements for a high degree of functionality and high speed.
When the control sections are separately configured, as described above, a variety of parameters required for the control of overall operation are usually stored in the nonvolatile memory of the overall control section, and are placed under collective management. The parameters for communications control are transferred from the overall control section to the communications control section.
To minimize power consumption, many of the electronic systems used on the wait mode for a long time such as a facsimile machine are provided with a power-saving mode. To maximize the power-saving effect, the various portions of the apparatus is turned off, except for the circuit that monitors the causes for returning, including user operations and incoming signals.
When the control section is divided into two sections: overall control section and communications control section, there are differences in initialization times after power has been turned on, and the overall control section handling a great amount of throughput starts up later than the communications control section. Thus, when power supply has turned on from the power-saving mode due to incoming signals, even if the communications control section has started, the parameters for communications control cannot be received from the overall control section if the overall control section has not yet started. A response to incoming signals cannot be made until the overall control section starts up, according to the prior art.
To solve this problem, an electronic apparatus (e.g. Official Gazette of Japanese Patent Tokkai 2003-32400) has been proposed, wherein the data such as communications control parameters to be transferred from a first controller (e.g. overall control section) to a second controller (e.g. communications control section) is stored into nonvolatile storage section that cannot be accessed by the second control section. When power has been turned on, the return mode is evaluated. If power supply has turned on from power-saving mode, data is sent to the RAM (Random Access Memory) of the second control section from the nonvolatile storage section, instead from the first control section.
In the prior art described in the in the Patent Document 1, when power has been turned on, evaluation is made to see if power supply has turned on from power-saving mode. After that, a data transfer method must be selected. This arrangement involves complicated processing after power turns on.
Further, the data has to be transferred from the nonvolatile storage section to the RAM of the second control section. Accordingly, data transfer is permitted only after termination of the initialization in the second control section. Thus, when data is read by a serial communications of low transfer speed from the nonvolatile memory of an EEPROM (Electrically Erasable and Programmable Programming Read Only Memory), a long time has to be spent before the second control section is enabled to get the required data from the RAM after power has been turned on. This has been a problem in the prior art.
In view of the prior art described above, it is an object of the present invention to solve the problem and to provide an electric apparatus ensuring early acquisition of the parameter required for the operation when power supply has turned on the power-saving mode.